Hannah Brancato

Maybe She's Born With It

Nylon and fabric

2012


I believe that producing art and culture is an effective form of resistance, so I produce my work with people united around social issues. My goal is to shed light on the role of art and media in contemporary society, by helping viewers contextualize art within social movements and political shifts. The sewing circle, a space for the exchange of ideas, is the model I most often use to encourage dialogue about people’s socio-political lives. With audio and video collected from these group interactions and individual interviews, I construct non-linear narratives of people’s personal relationships to broad issues like rape culture, power and domestic violence. 

In addition to making documentary media, quilting is both a metaphoric and literal process in my art practice. I combine familiar objects and images that articulate the amorphous effects of popular culture on people’s personal lives. I assemble found objects, make quilts, design patterns, and produce video, with the goal of instigating dialogue about innocuous aspects of the everyday. The environments that I make are meant to open viewers up to the nuances of personal experience; create participatory spaces; and offer insight into the connections between social issues and the political situations that surround and create them.